


The first thing that changed in their relationship.

by persephone20



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, TVD episode: 'One Ring to Kill Them All', hints of Elena/Alaric/Damon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-17
Updated: 2012-03-17
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:50:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the same end of scene sequence as <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/363609"> I've Only Dreamed</a>, just in a completely different direction. Alaric's agreement that he and Elena can "look after each other" heads their relationship in a completely different direction. Spoilers up to and including 3.16 "One Ring to Kill Them All".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The first thing that changed in their relationship.

**Author's Note:**

> This one kind of got out of control. I wish that someone would make an animated .gif of the Elena/Alaric hug near the end of this episode. I've loved this ship all season, but I've struggled to find a way to make it convincing until I wrote this.

"Gonna head to bed in a few."

"Hey, listen, Elena. The, uh, the Sherriff told me about everything you did today. And while I appreciate it, I don't want you getting in trouble because of me, okay?"

Elena turns from the Gilbert journal she's reading in the living room couch. It was such a relief to see Alaric home an hour or so ago. He went upstairs to have a shower, while she said goodbye to Matt and thanked him for coming over, and Elena just knew that she had taken a few more of those steps in that amorphous direction of growing up today. She'd taken care of Ric when Ric hadn't been able to take care of himself and, if breaking and entering into another person's house was an unusual way of getting that done, it could be put down to the quirkiness of this town they lived in that Elena had been put to such lengths. 

She thought, when Alaric held her after coming back, that that was his recognition of what she had stepped up and done for him today. The house was quieter without Jeremy in it these days. It was harder to keep up those official labels of 'guardian' and 'ward'. Especially when Elena was 18, and had seen and gone through all the things that she had. 

Seeing him coming downstairs now, Elena isn't so sure at all that Alaric has read anything into her actions today at all. 

"If not for you," she turns to ask him. "For who?"

It's a valid question. Stefan and Damon had never accepted her help, even though she'd been more than willing to give it on so many occasions. For them, she was firmly placed in this 'breakable' box, needing to be protected at all times, with or without the aid of Klaus' compulsion, and there wasn't a damned thing that Elena could do about it.

But there was something she could do about it here. She would be damned before she allowed Alaric to place her in that box too. 

"Well still, I... I'm the one who's supposed to look after you." He gives a self-deprecating chuckle. "Even if I suck at it."

Elena offers a small smile. The very fact that he 'sucked at it' is further proof to her that their current situation didn't work. "Okay well, how about we agree to look after each other then?"

The look Alaric gives her turns her heart over. It's an unguarded moment, the likes of which Elena hasn't often seen without a couple of glasses of scotch between them. That she's seeing it now means something. She doesn't know what, but she smiles, hoping there is as much that is unguarded in her expression to offer him in return.

When he accedes to her request, it's not with gentle mockery, but with a quiet acknowledgement that he knows she can do exactly what she's said. "Deal."

That is the first thing to changed in their relationship.

*

The second thing that changes is due to an accident out of the shower. True, Alaric had once fronted up on the landing wearing only a box of Chunky Monkey when he'd first started staying nights at the Gilbert residence but, back then, Alaric had been with Jenna, and Elena had been with Stefan. 

Neither of those is the case when Alaric opens the door to the bathroom and finds Elena standing there in front of the mirror. With wet hair. And a towel hanging on the rack behind her. 

Alaric spins away fast, but not fast enough not to gain an eyeful of Elena. "Oh! I thought you wouldn't have gotten home from school yet!"

"I had an afternoon period off!" 

Elena doesn't know where to look, where to stand. She supposes she needs to get out of the bathroom as fast as possible as it's patently clear that the towel is not going to cover her enough now that they've run into each other in this way. 

"I'm going to..." Alaric makes hand gestures in the direction of the hallway, and rushes out in the direction of the stairs. 

Elena just tries to get her breathing straight, then has to do it all over again when she notices that Alaric has glanced up in the direction of the bathroom as he's headed back downstairs. 

She scrunches her eyes up tight and wishes, not for the first time, that it hadn't felt so necessary to send Jeremy away. It's just the first time that she's happened to think it for _this_ reason. 

*

Dinner around the dining room table is awkward that night. They sit together at the dining room table to eat because the couch in front of the TV is too intimate but eating separately will be too much like admitting that something has gone horribly wrong between them. And nothing has. Nothing more than a little bit of embarrassment on both sides that will pass in a short period of time. That's not the worrying part.

The worrying part is the way that Elena felt when she was getting dressed in her room, pulling on underwear and thinking of the way Alaric's face flushed when she caught him looking again as he walked downstairs. The first shock of him seeing her naked passed too fast for any impressions to be made, but the fact that he had looked again...

Elena doesn't know what to make of that so, instead, she asks Alaric to pass the peas.

Alaric notices the next time Elena is in class that she goes back to calling him 'Alaric', not simply 'Ric'. He realises that the reason why he hasn't noticed this before is because she hasn't called him anything, not since that time by the shower. God knows Alaric has done his best to wipe the visual memory of the young woman--his _ward's_ \--young and flawless form from the backs of his eyelids, but he knows he shouldn't have looked back up at her as he was hurrying away. He knew that at the time, he just didn't know what prompted him.

He doesn't know how to tackle this with Elena, so he just asks her to hand in her weekly assignment.

*

Meredith's presence in their lives and in their house reminds them that this isn't the biggest problem that they've got going for them right now. The thought that he could be blacking out and committing these heinous murders is the most awful thing that has happened to him since he woke up to be told that Klaus had been walking around in his body for the last few weeks. He didn't think that anything would ever be that devastating again.

"Is it safe here..." Alaric clears his throat, and tries to keep his eyes set on Meredith, which is always more difficult when Elena is in the room. "Is it safe here, for Elena I mean, with me...?"

Meredith looks at Elena and misses all the underlying reasons why such a question could be asked. Elena doesn't miss any of it. Alaric sees the way that her eyes darken, and she stares at him until he's the one to look away, ashamed. He feels like he has so many reasons to be ashamed. 

"I don't think Elena is in any danger," Meredith says eventually. "She's one of the founding families, but she isn't on the council. But we can take precautions..."

" _I_ can take precautions," Elena informs them both, and Alaric wonders where she found all that steel she puts in her spine.

Alaric shouldn't have been surprised when Elena took him up on that later on in the night. Elena was planning it virtually from the point when she saw that Alaric was trying to find a reason to leave her house.

"What about looking after each other?" she demands.

Alaric is in the process of taking his belt off before bed, but he stops immediately as soon as Elena confronts him. He stares at her for a while, then ducks his head.

"Feel free to keep looking after me," he says, without looking at her. "This is me looking after you."

"This is you running away," Elena tells him. She steps into Jeremy's room, which has become Alaric's room simply because it's the best of the bad options. "I thought that not talking about what happened in the bathroom would be better for making the awkwardness go away faster, but that doesn't seem to be happening."

Alaric's got nothing to say to that. There is nothing to say. 

"Alaric... There's nothing wrong with the fact that you walked in on me. People who live with each other do that sort of thing all the time."

"Do you know you stopped calling me 'Ric'?" It's not a sentence Alaric expected to hear himself say. It's certainly not the first sentence he expected to say on this subject. But there it is. "You stopped calling me 'Ric' after I walked in on you in the bathroom."

He watches as Elena opens her mouth, then closes it again. "Well, that's not deliberate. Ric." She smiles. "See, just a coincidence."

Alaric finishes pulling off his belt and kicks off his shoes. Then he looks up, and notices how Elena's eyes have watched the motions. Particularly around his waist area.

He licks his lips. A sentence from the journal Meredith and Elena had him read jumps out at him. _I don't feel like myself anymore._ Alaric doesn't think it's the ring doing this, getting this reaction out of him, but what other reason is there for the fact that he's crossing the room towards Elena and he can't stop himself from doing it. 

Elena only moves to lift her head to face the taller man. "Ric?" is all she says, before he dips his head and presses his lips against hers.

It's only for a heartbeat. Alaric fullheartedly expects to be slapped when he pulls himself away from her. "That was..." he shakes his head, wincing in advance.

But Elena's features are flushed, and there is this expression of ecstatic wonder on her face as her eyes slowly open. Her lips are still slightly parted, and Alaric can't help but take them again. 

This time, he lifts his hand to cup her jaw, and steps in closer to her so that their bodies are touching from their hips to her shoulders. The kiss lasts much longer than a heartbeat this time, and Alaric's drinking it in, drinking every moment of her in, waiting for the moment when she comes back to her senses, and pushes him away, and tells him to get out of her house.

None of these things happen. Alaric's heart is pumping harder than he remembers it happening for anything other than fighting against vampires who are bigger, faster and stronger than him. Elena's lips look well kissed at this point, and both of them are very flushed.

"Uh..." Alaric starts. He turns his head to the side, where the belt and shoes that started this are haphhazardly placed on the floor of Jeremy's room. "So... that shouldn't have happened."

He figures it's best to start this thing, but he's unprepared for the anger that rises up in Elena and is directed, full force, at him. 

She doesn't say anything, though. For a moment, Elena's eyes are livid. The features softened by forbidden kisses harden, and the flush takes on a different nature. But he recieves none of her ire. Instead, Elena turns sharply on her heel and exits Jeremy's room. A minute later, Alaric hears Elena's door slam behind her.

*

She can't believe this has happened. She just can't believe it. She feels like such a fool, like she was the one standing there and wanting it to happen while he... 

Surely anything is a better first thing to say after you kiss someone than, "So... that shouldn't have happened." Elena doesn't know how she's going to be able to face him in the morning. 

She doesn't know how she's going to stop thinking about it. If it was that hard to think of anything else after he merely looked at her while walking downstairs, what's it going to be like now? 

*

Damon's mobile gets two text messages in the space of around 10 minutes. Alaric's is first.

_I could really use a drink. You in?_

He's pulling on his boots, ready to meet Alaric at the Mystic Grill, when Elena's message arrives. 

_Something's happened. Where are you?_

Damon tips his head to the side while considering this second message. Ric's was easy to reply to. A simple, _Yes. Grill_ had been enough to both confirm and plan. Ric would arrive in the next 10 to 15, and they could drown their sorrows over the latest shitty thing that this town had dealt out to them.

He would have thought it was to do with being tossed in jail and sprung back out again, but that had been several days ago now. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be behind an urgent message for drinking today. 

Coupled with Elena's message, probably from the same house...

Damon thinks for only a moment, before sending, _At the Grill. Join me there?_ Then he drops his phone in his pocket, grabs his jacket from the coat rack, and whistles under his breath as he closes the front door behind him. 

*

They are coming from the same place, so it probably isn't a surprise that Elena and Alaric walked into each other on their way to the Mystic Grill. Elena sees him first, but not soon enough that she can prepare the reaction she wants to have in front of him for the first time post-kiss. 

Alaric is similarly underprepared. "What are you doing here?"

Elena lifts her brows. "I'm not allowed to be out here?"

Alaric frowns. "I didn't mean I'm keeping you under curfew..."

"Good." Elena's voice is clipped. "Because you can't really get away with that kind of thing after tonight."

Alaric looks so crestfallen at this responce that Elena almost takes it back. 

"Ahh," says a familiar voice from behind them. "My two favourite people."

Both of them spin around to face Damon, who gives them his best thin lipped grin as he tries to read the subtext behind the actual text he has just overheard.

"Going my way?" he asks.

Alaric takes a step towards him. "What are you playing at here, Damon?" He slants a gaze across at Elena, looking away again almost before his eyes fall upon her.

She is standing behind him, arms crossed over her chest and looking no more happily at Damon.

Damon, of course, maintains the very picture of innocence. "Hey, don't blame me for whatever lover's spat's gone on here." As the heartbeats of both of the people in front of him suddenly shift, Damon's face goes slack in shock for an instant before he can recover. " _No._ "

"No," Elena shuts down firmly, and Alaric is just glad that Elena can't see the facial expression that he pulls after that. Damon can, though. Damon watches with interest as Alaric's eyes close and he looks like he's just been struck.

"Uh _huh_ ," is all Damon has to bring to the conversation. He walks towards Alaric. "Come on, party guys. Something tells me this is not a conversation you want to have in front of the whole of the Mystic Grill."

"I was just... I forgot something." Alaric calls himself a fool for involving Damon. Of course _Damon_ was the one Elena went to after the kiss. He looks at him closely for a moment, but sees no sign that Elena has told him yet about the kiss. He's sure to hear about it when she does. The expected slaps will be nothing in comparison to the swipe he expects Damon to take. He feels like a complete and utter hypocrit, warning Damon off in the past. "You guys go on. I'll catch up with you later, Damon." 

"You know where to find us," Damon says easily, but his eyes are too watchful. Alaric looks away, and then feels that he's given Damon even more information. "Sure we can't change your mind?"

Elena doesn't know what to feel. She expected that calling Damon would make her feel better, would give her a distraction from Alaric. Now, Damon is intricably linked to thoughts of Alaric. How could she not have thought that Alaric would go to Damon too? 

"I'll get that thing you forgot," Elena says, offering the peace branch. She sees the surprise in his face and tries not to make anything of it. "I'm kinda tired now anyway. Apparently all I needed was a walk before bed."

Alaric opens his mouth to reply, but it is Damon's retort that gets in there first.

" _Guys._ " He says only that, but suddenly Alaric and Elena are both looking at him. "I'm not stupid. I've been around for 150 years, and you two have been living alone together in a house for several weeks now." Damon's eyebrows lift, as though to say whatever had happened between them was already a foregone conclusion based on their situation. 

Elena stays still, really interested to hear what Alaric has to say about this. He was so eager to run away from Elena. She doesn't think he'll find it as easy to run from both Elena and Damon. Of course, she rejects the thoughts that Alaric wasn't the only one doing the running. 

"It's not like that," Alaric says roughly. He raises his ring, talking to it rather than to either Elena or Damon. "This ring changes you. The number of times I've escaped death now... it shouldn't be any surprise that there's a penalty."

Damon is watching Alaric very carefully. Memories of Samantha Gilbert came to mind, but he didn't want to interrupt Alaric.

Elena's not thinking that far ahead at all. "You think it's because of your _ring_ that you kissed me?" She has at least the sense to say the sentence with quiet incredulity. The look of hurt on her face might be one of the reasons for it. "Ric, that ring causes you to black out, to kill. Did you black out on me back there, cause you certainly didn't kill me."

"I didn't black out," Alaric admits, though he looks hardly able to face Elena with the admission and memory of it.

Damon decides it's time for another one of his pertinent comments again. "Ric. She doesn't look that upset. You're a good looking older man."

" _Older_ being the emphasis," Alaric hisses out. He doesn't seem to have any of the same troubles of meeting Damon's gaze. But, if Alaric thinks he's going to have an easy ride to guilt city on this one, he's got another think coming. 

Damon turns to Elena. "And you're upset. Are you upset that he kissed you, or that he went to talk to me about it immediately after?"

Elena's lips parted. She looked between the two men. "That's about the crudest way you could have put it, Damon," she reproaches him.

"Answer the question," Damon says, skating a glance towards Alaric just to make sure he's paying attention. 

Elena takes a deep breath in. "I'm upset because he left. Because he said that it shouldn't have happened."

"Because it _shouldn't_ have." Alaric looks wild eyed, as though he can't understand how he's the only one who sees he's done something wrong here. "Look, Damon, we can't all look to be in our early 20s and dating high school girls. I'm Elena's _guardian_."

"And I'm 18, Ric." Elena steps forward so that he would stop looking at damned Damon. "You said yourself that means I'm old enough to take care of myself now."

"Girl's got a point, Ric." It wasn't like Damon hadn't done his best to talk Alaric out of having _that_ particular conversation. It had, of course, gone as fruitlessly as Damon had supposed.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to do now," Elena continues. She peers into him, willing him to actually see her as a person, not someone he needed to feel guilty for feeling attracted to. "Did you mean what you said?" she finishes, softer now, so that Alaric has to strain to hear her speak.

"Yes," Alaric answers heavily. "I just never..." Just never thought it would backfire so spectacularly, he finishes silently.

Elena waits none too patiently for the end of his sentence, but Alaric doesn't supply it. She looks to Damon. "Thanks," she says sincerely. "You've really helped us out."

"What are friends for?" he says, with that grim little smile. "Go on, Ric," he says quietly. "Be with your girl."

Of all the things that Damon has said tonight, Alaric thinks this is the one that hits him hardest. Not until this point is he able to put aside his thoughts on how forbidden Elena is to him enough to think of how much this conversation would have caused Damon.

"Damon..." he starts, but Damon lifts up a finger, and tilts it from side to side.

"None of that now," Damon says, his eyes flashing also to Elena as she too picks up the stake Damon had in this conversation, and runs her mind back to the things he said anyway. "Run along home, kids," Damon finishes, but his eyes are steel as he says it.

It's strange walking away from Damon on that note, but neither of them have vampire senses enough to stay aware of him for very long. Soon enough, the biggest awareness becomes the big gap between the two of them. Neither of them try to close it with something so innocent and sweet as hand holding. Neither of the two of them are innocent or sweet. 

Alaric unlocks the door to the Gilbert house, but then waits like a gentleman for Elena to enter into the house first. 

"Thanks," she murmurs, suddenly shy in the moment. For all her strong words out on the street in front of Damon, she's coming to suspect that she's never been with a man like Alaric before. 

"You're welcome," Alaric says. 

Elena hesitates, and then starts walking up the stairs. If all fails, she thinks, at least she can get undressed in the bathroom. It's not like he's never seen her naked before. And, if he doesn't follow her in there, there's an adjoining door between there and Jeremy's bedroom.

It doesn't come to that. Once they are on top of the landing, Alaric takes it as the time to reach out to hold Elena's hand. She looks down at the contact between them, then looks up at him with shining, hopeful eyes. 

"I just want you to know..." Alaric starts slowly. "All the things that make me a bad guardian make me just as bad as a boyfriend. I drink too much, I stay up too late, I run around the town making friends with vampires and making enemies of vampires I then have to kill. Hardly the most dependable type for a boyfriend."

Elena's heart leaps the first time he says the word 'boyfriend', so much so that she hardly registers any of the words Alaric says after that. From the tone of his voice, though, she gets most of the gist. 

"I'm a big girl," she says. "How about we take it just as it comes?"

Alaric nods his head a couple of times. "Let's do that," he says.


End file.
